


just flow with it

by oh_simone



Category: Original Work
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Magical Accidents, Male-Female Friendship, Urban Fantasy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:08:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,224
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26641216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oh_simone/pseuds/oh_simone
Summary: An accidental mermaid bonds with her himbo roomie.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 11
Collections: Hold Me: A Comfort Prompfest





	just flow with it

**Author's Note:**

> written for [Hold Me comfort promptfest](https://sholio.dreamwidth.org/1347813.html).

Tammy had two roommates.  
  
One was Jenny Olvera, who worked in the accounting department at a law firm, coordinated their rent payments with the landlady, remembered to buy toilet paper, and had never met crisis she couldn’t troubleshoot. If a zombie apocalypse happened, Tammy would grab Jenny and her perfectly packed emergency kit, and follow her pre-printed instructions to the closest safehouse, where they could hole up with a pantry stocked so efficiently, they’d survive a couple months in leisure, while Jenny methodically communicated for help with a shortwave radio, walkie-talkie, or smoke signals.  
  
Well, it wasn’t quite a zombie apocalypse that had knocked Tammy for a loop, but a disgruntled practitioner, who’d come into the store ten minutes before closing and looking to make a scene.  
  
“Ma’am—” was about all Tammy’d been able to sigh before the customer threw at her face a Silver & Rue bag that was confusingly both smoking and soaking wet.  
  
“It didn’t work!” the woman had shouted before Tammy’s manager could toss her out of the shop. “You sold me a broken product, you charlatans! My _child_ was with me, what if it was dangerous? You could have _killed_ him.”  
  
“ _Gargh_ ,” Tammy had managed from behind a faceful of poorly-poured potion.  
  
“Tams, that’s a chimeric solution,” her coworker had said worriedly. “Better go wash it off before it takes hold.”  
  
“It’s fine,” Tammy had replied, scrubbing a paper towel over her face. “She said it was a dud.”  
  
It was not a dud, however, as she found out an hour later while eating cold pizza in the living room and watching _Hawaii Five-0_. It was, in fact, just on a delayed reaction.

One moment, Tammy was idly pondering the tightness of Scott Caan’s shirts and the next, her cheap spandex leggings had split into shreds because she’d gone and grown a fucking giant ass fishtail from the waist down.  
  
Jenny would’ve taken a single look at Tammy, immobile on the couch because of her great big flipper-flopping scaly tail and immediately conceptualized four backup plans as to how to turn them back to legs, but she was working late at the office today.  
  
Which brought Tammy to roommate number two:  
  
Sam “Doritos” Sing.  
  
Sam, who’d been a hasty replacement for Jenny’s cousin who had dropped out of the lease after being offered a job the next state over.

Sam, who Jenny’s cousin had described as, “Spacey, but mostly harmless.”

Sam, who, when pushed to elaborate, Jenny’s cousin had hedged, “You know, just one lightbulb, empty house kinda guy. Great at karaoke, though.”

Sam, who’d invited them to call him ‘Doritos’ and followed that up with exactly zero explanation.

Sam, who thought Gandalf was a real actual person in history, and that Middle Earth was ancient China, because “you know, they’re the Middle Kingdom or whatever.”  
  
Sam, who, having just emerged from his room, now froze in the doorway.  
  
The point wasn’t so much that Tammy didn’t trust Sam to navigate himself out of a tent constructed of wet tissue paper—he was very sweet, and didn’t have a mean bone in his body— but that…

Okay, actually, that was _exactly_ it. Nice and dim was not what this _situation demanded._  
  
“Dude,” Sam said after a long moment. “You’re a mermaid.”  
  
“I’m _hexed_ is what I am,” Tammy growled.  
  
He scratched his floppy hair, face scrunching up in confusion. “But like… why?”  
  
“Does it _matter_?” Tammy flapped her hands frantically. Her tail flapped along, rattling the coffee table and both she and Sam stared at it in horrified fascination.  
  
“Hey look, I don’t judge, love is love and all, everyone’s kinky in their own way, but this is a shared space, man,” Sam said a tad reproachfully.  
  
“ _Oh my god_ , Sam,” Tammy hissed hysterically. “There was an accident at work!”  
  
“No doubt, no doubt,” Sam said, relieved. “So, you need anything, or…?”  
  
To her utter mortification, Tammy felt tears prickle her eyes, the shocked anger and confusion and resentment rolling into one unstoppable swell. “Just go away,” she snapped, and glared at the dull, dishwater-gray scales of her fishtail instead of throwing something at him. After a moment, he shuffled off into the kitchen, and Tammy sniffled, reminding herself that the transformation would wear off soon. The sort of generic spell kits their store carried were mass-produced and harmless, regulated as they were by the U.S. Federal Augury and Thaumaturgy Commission. A couple hours as half a fish, stuck on the couch, and everything would be _fine_.  
  
Except the tail was heavy and pulled awkwardly on her spine and kidneys, and she’d left her phone charging on the other end of the living room which was now totally out of reach, and she’d had a headache even before the change, and also her scales were starting to itch horribly and—  
  
“Okay, Tams, don’t take this the wrong way and all, but I’m gonna touch you now,” Sam said, startling her out of her funk. She hadn’t even heard him approach.  
  
“Don’t sneak up on me like that,” she groused. “What do you mean?”  
  
Sam looked at her very seriously, which was more comical on his face than reassuring. “I’m going to pick you up and carry you to my car.”  
  
“I’m not leaving the house like this,” she squeaked.  
  
“No one’ll even see you,” he promised solemnly. “I got like, towels in the car.”  
  
“But—no, Sam, it’s fine, it’s only a couple hours.”  
  
“My dude,” he said grimacing, “your scales are drying out, and we only have a shower in the house. Also, the living room is starting to smell like a Red Lobster.”  
  
“But,” Tammy said helplessly, and then gestured to her body, which could be described as Rubenesque. Sam, on the other hand, as fit as he was, leaned more towards the beanstalk variety of human silhouettes.  
  
He brightened, undaunted, and shrugged. “Oh, it’s cool. I lift.” And before she could protest, he slid one arm under the bend of her tail, the other under her shoulders, and stood up in one swoop. “The trick is to do it with your legs,” he confided with a sunny grin, and headed towards the door, whistling.  
  
~  
  
Tammy fiddled with the edge of the ragged beach towel he’d dug up from the trunk and glanced at him. Sam had turned his cap around backwards and was bobbing his head along to the alt rock radio station. Despite the half year of cohabitation, this was probably the longest time they’d spent in each other’s presence without a pizza as buffer.  
  
“Where are you taking me, exactly?” she asked with some exasperation, after he continued humming along to the radio, seemingly without any intention of filling her in. “We’re not going to a beach, right?”  
  
“Oh! Yeah,” he grinned and snapped. “So I thought about it, but traffic is pretty gnarly at this hour, and by the time we get there, you’d just have regular feet and no bathing suit.”  
  
“Duh.” Tammy rolled her eyes. “I told you, I can just wait this out at home.”  
  
“But also, I had the perfect second place in mind,” he told her proudly, and then Tammy realized they were turning onto the grounds of the local university.  
  
“Not the pool!”  
  
“What, _no_ , you said no people.” He looked hilariously offended, and Tammy couldn’t help but crack a smile at that. “No way. I’m taking you to my department’s garden—it’s behind a gate, and I know the key.”  
  
Oh, right. Sam gave off incredibly ditzy vibes sometimes, but he _was_ in a graduate program at the U… for holistic practices or yoga or… psychedelics? Something kind of old-fashioned and wacky hippie-ish. But before Tammy could recall or ask, they’d pulled into a small parking lot in front of a walled courtyard, and Sam was scooping her up again, just as easily as he had the first time.  
  
Tammy kept one arm looped around his neck and the other fisted in the faded beach towel as they loped up to the iron gate. Sam scuffled a little awkwardly and touched his pointer finger to the keypad; Tammy turned away so she wouldn’t see the rune he drew to unlock the wards. Wasn’t like she’d be able to recreate it or use it without additional priming on the lock anyways, but it just wasn’t polite.  
  
The gate unlocked and Sam shouldered through easily. They emerged into a garden paved with gravel pathways laid in precise lines.  
  
“What’s this?” Tammy asked, curiosity overtaking her. “Herb garden?”  
  
“Kinda sorta,” Sam shrugged, or at least as best he was able. He was straining just a bit now, but was determinedly marching forward without any change in pace. Tammy kinda sorta loved him for it. “It’s the Folk Thaumicology department’s catch-all work space. We do grow all sorts of neat stuff for the herbalists, but like, the placement of the trees is designed with ritualists in mind and the fountain’s both cool and provides purified water for spells.”  
  
“Fountain?” Tammy echoed.  
  
“That one,” Sam said, jerking his chin, and Tammy turned to gawp at a long, deep pool running down the center of the courtyard. At the midway point, the water tumbled down a series of steps until it gathered in a round basin at the very end.  
  
“It’s beautiful,” she breathed as they approached it.  
  
“Oh, true facts,” Sam agreed enthusiastically, and dropped her into the fountain with a splash.  
  
Tammy yelped at the bone-cold shock, twisted, floundered, inhaled half a lung of invigoratingly pure water, and shot up to the surface, clear across on the other side of the fountain. “What the _fuck_ , Sam!”  
  
“Yooo! Your tail did a crazy thing!” Sam hollered back, and gave her two thumbs up.  
  
Tammy stared at him, overwhelmed, and then glanced down at her own tail. It waved under the water instinctively, keeping her hovering in the same spot against the current. “Fuck my everloving duck,” she uttered. The itchiness was gone, as was that miserable all-over achey feeling, replaced by a deep sense of refreshment. She’d been dehydrated.  
  
After another moment, she tentatively wiggled her tail and promptly lost her balance. The water closed over her head and she choked briefly before she managed to gasp a mouthful of air.  
  
“You okay, Tams?”  
  
She gulped another breath of air and then, with more purpose, aimed herself back towards the opposite end of the fountain. When she popped back up, Sam crowed excitedly and held out for a fistbump.  
  
“Al _right_ , Tam _my_!”  
  
Grinning, she gently bumped her knuckles against his. “ _God_ , I feel so much better,” she sighed, flipped around and propping herself up against the edge of the pool by her elbows. Her tail curled languidly in the running water; properly hydrated, her scales shone a silvery blue.  
  
“It’s ‘cause half of you is fish, and even half-fish need to swim, brah,” Sam said wisely.  
  
“Is this the stuff you’re learning here?” Tammy laughed.  
  
“No, that’s just common sense,” Sam told her. “My buddy once used a chimeric to be a centaur for the day, and he kept asking us to feed him grass.”  
  
“I don’t get people,” Tammy said after a disturbed silence.  
  
“Yeah, me neither,” Sam agreed. “We got him a shot of wheatgrass from Jamba Juice instead.”  
  
~  
  
For the next hour or so, Tammy swam around the fountain. If she didn’t think too hard, she could pretend this was just a regular workout at the gym; the illusion was dispelled every time she made a circuit that was about thrice as fast as she’d otherwise have gone, but the operating phrase was _don’t think too hard._  
  
Meanwhile, Sam wandered through the garden, chatting up the trees and rock formations like old friends and taking an old watering can to the plot of herbs.  
  
By the time a prickly, staticky chill swept through Tammy and left her floundering again, this time with two legs, it was getting dark.  
  
Alerted by her garbled yelp of alarm, Sam grabbed the beach towel and held it up with his eyes scrunched tight. She paddled to the edge of the pool and hauled herself out.  
  
“Thanks, Sam,” she chattered, ice-cold purified water streaming off her in rivulets. The towel was large enough to hang from her shoulders and still cover everything that needed coverage, thankfully.  
  
“No problem, Tammo,” he said cheerfully. “What’re roommates for?”  
  
She punched him lightly in the arm. “Most people would’ve let me dry out on that couch alone.”  
  
Sam looked confused. “Why would anyone do that?” he asked, sincerely upset.  
  
On impulse, Tammy leaned forward and hugged him hard. “You’re a good one, Sam Sing.”  
  
“Aw, hey, you too, Tams,” Sam said, patting her back. “Always down to help a homie in need.”  
  
They broke apart, and then stared at the gravel path and her bare feet.  
  
“Do you want…?” Sam gestured.  
  
“Please?” Tammy asked, and Sam obligingly swung her up in his surprisingly strong hold once more.  
  
“Hey, you hungry? There’s a place down the street with a solid bacon burger.”  
  
“Only if it’s drive-thru, Sam.”  
  
“ _Ohhh_ , right, right, no pants. Mickey D’s?”  
  
“Sounds good. Hey, why _do_ they call you Doritos anyways?”  
  
“ _Yo_ , okay, so like, one time in junior year, there was this Radical Thaumaturgy Theory class and we had to do these presentations…”

**Author's Note:**

> Some additional notes and thoughts about this bit will eventually be posted [here](https://chouette.dreamwidth.org/151693.html).


End file.
